The ever-increasing demand for bandwidth has spurred the growth of high speed transport networks. Currently, the key standard for use in such networks is SONET, which is an acronym for Synchronous Optical Network. The SONET standard defines a hierarchy of optical transmission rates over point-to-point and ring network topologies. For example, the SONET optical carrier--level 3 (OC-3) transmits at 155 Mb/s and OC-12 transmits at 622 Mb/s.
SONET was developed to provide a survivable transport infrastructure that could carry a range of different payload protocols and payload bit rates.
Survivability is achieved in SONET using a ring topology with a SONET-defined standard protocol for coordinating traffic restoration in the event of a failure. On a ring, there are always two diverse routes that can be used to interconnect any two nodes on the ring. In the event of a failure of one of those routes, spare capacity on the other route is used to restore the traffic affected by the failure. In SONET, every node must terminate the entire optical signal in order to be able to access every payload, even though typically a node would only access a small subset of the payloads and pass the rest of them downstream to other nodes. Termination of the entire optical signal is also required to give each node access to an automatic protection switching (APS) protocol that coordinates access to the spare capacity by the node during failure events. Unfortunately, this requirement of SONET to terminate the entire optical signal at every node makes upgrading the capacity of the ring a slow and costly process, because every node must be upgraded even though it may be that only one node requires the additional capacity.
In order to carry a variety of payloads and payload bit rates, the SONET standard defines a payload envelope structure into which all payloads must be mapped. This envelope is then carried within one timeslot within the time division multiplexed SONET signal. Although this provides a SONET network with the ability to carry a variety of payloads, a new payload cannot be transported until a mapping is defined and the interface circuit is developed and deployed. In addition, if there is insufficient spare capacity in the network to handle the new payload bit rate, then the entire network may have to be upgraded. Thus, SONET networks are not responsive to the needs of today's services, which are demanding greater capacity and introducing a wide range of protocols.
The networks of today's telecommunications carriers typically consist of an access portion that connects end-users to the carrier's network, and a transport portion (sometimes called backbone or core network) that provides the interconnection between the access networks. The access portion of the network is under pressure to provide a greater variety of signal types such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), asynchronous digital subscriber loops (ADSL), and SONET, to handle the emerging diversity of services. These new payloads also tend to require greater bit rates to support the underlying services. Transport networks are under pressure to provide more capacity due to the higher bit rate services coming out of the access networks as well as the growth in the number and size of the access networks reflecting the growth in the number of end-users.
An object of the invention is to alleviate the limitations in SONET-based networks.